Free Verse
Not all poems need to rhyme--forced rhyming sometimes sounds like this clip from one of my all-time favorite movies, "The Princess Bride." When you are trying to rhyme, but it sounds awkward and forced, try free verse.
When you are writing a poem in free verse, you have more freedom to explore different literary techniques because you are not bound by specific rules about form, meter, or rhyming. Be creative! Free verse poetry: -doesn't follow specific rules about rhyming or rhythm (meter) -usually doesn't rhyme. -still uses literary devices and author's craft to create emotion. -uses breaks at the writer's discretion instead of by set rules. (see "Lining a Poem" for details) --- |
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Examples:
"The Trouble With Poetry"
The trouble with poetry, I realized as I walked along a beach one night -- cold Florida sand under my bare feet, a show of stars in the sky -- the trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry, more guppies crowding the fish tank, more baby rabbits hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass. And how will it ever end? unless the day finally arrives when we have compared everything in the world to everything else in the world, and there is nothing left to do but quietly close our notebooks and sit with our hands folded on our desks. Poetry fills me with joy and I rise like a feather in the wind. Poetry fills me with sorrow and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge. But mostly poetry fills me with the urge to write poetry, to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame to appear at the tip of my pencil. And along with that, the longing to steal, to break into the poems of others with a flashlight and a ski mask. And what an unmerry band of thieves we are, cut-purses, common shoplifters, I thought to myself as a cold wave swirled around my feet and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea, which is an image I stole directly from Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- to be perfectly honest for a moment -- the bicycling poet of San Francisco whose little amusement park of a book I carried in a side pocket of my uniform up and down the treacherous halls of high school. -- Billy Collins "After You" What is left? A painted marionette Moved from day to day By strings of obligations. Always on stage-- Sometimes dancing woodenly Under bright lights With a plaster smile for Crowds who do not care. But more often jerked rudely, Pulled back by ties Of reality. Sometimes sitting so calmly Being the model marionette With composed hands and feet, Controlled looks and motions, When a naughty little memory Flies from left to jerk a string Or two And thump a carefully controlled, composed Model marionette elbow on the Table of the set Under the bright lights. What is left Is a marionette who Only wants to change Back to the real girl she once Was before She turned to wood. “The Backwards Poem" (student poem by B.M. 1st hour 2019) Backwards everything's when it hate you don't Wrong everything's like feels it when What out figure can't you but Me for feels everything how that's Confusing bit a is this if sorry Things see I how is this because Backwards is hear or see I everything Is it how just that's, Backwards the of curse the with life the living. |
"Flying at Night"
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations. Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies like a snowflake falling on water. Below us, some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death, snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn back into the little system of his care. All night, the cities, like shimmering novas, tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his. --Ted Kooser "Cloud" A blue stain creeps across the deep pile of the evergreens. From inside the forest it seems like an interior matter, something wholly to do with trees, a color passed from one to another, a requirement to which they submit unflinchingly like soldiers or brave people getting older. Then the sun comes back and it’s totally over. --Kay Ryan "Introduction to Poetry" I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means. -Billy Collins A Lonely Planet Ponders by John P. Curtin I'm unleashed but feel a pull; I'm in orbit. Gravity, my greatest attraction, Has never let me down. I am one of several, maybe many; I'm not sure, I seldom see the rest. I know, though, that there are more like me. A network, a galaxy; A universe at work. As I spin, solitary, As I wend my way through space, There's design; there's order; there is a pattern. There are causes and their effects, And there are reasons that Such should happen this way And this should happen in such a way. Even unpredictability is governed by principle. Take comfort. Chance, too, toes a line. "Writer's Block"
Staring at me, taunting me with its nothingness my empty page looms. The cursor, blinking, seems to urge me to scrawl something on the page-- anything but the awful nothingness. Now…now…now…now...now it demands like a sticky two-year-old begging for attention. If I were an optimist, I would say the page is a promising vacancy, overflowing with possibilities, potential just waiting to be hatched… but I’m not. Instead I stare at the glowing screen, hoping that inspiration will arrive soon, packed with ideas. but knowing that it is really caught on the late flight in a snowstorm with lost luggage. Pawing through old ideas, Snatching at glimpses of images. Trying to catch thoughts that dance on the edges of my brain. Got it! Nope. --Mrs. Falconer |